Ten thousand years ago, human hunters killed enough saber tooth cats, woolly mammoths, sloths and almost all other large mammals to drive them to extinction. Since humans were able to do this with spears, imagine how readily we can do this now.

Toyota is investing heavily in hybrids. The question is whether the hybrids will stress fuel economy or performance. The answer according to Toyota will be "in the software." You will be able to "push a button" to optimize for fuel economy or performance.

GAO issued a report on EPA's consideration of environmental justice during three key Clean Air Act rulemakings. GAOs bottom line is that environmental justice concerns don't count for much. GAO Report

GAOs highlights of the report: When drafting the three clean air rules, EPA generally devoted little attention to environmental justice. While EPA guidance on rulemaking states that workgroups should consider environmental justice early in this process, GAO found that a lack of guidance and training for workgroup members on identifying environmental justice issues may have limited theirability to identify such issues. In addition, while EPA officials stated thateconomic reviews of proposed rules consider potential environmentaljustice impacts, the gasoline and diesel rules did not provide decisionmakers with environmental justice analyses, and EPA has not identified allthe types of data necessary to analyze such impacts. Finally, in all threerules, EPA mentioned environmental justice when they were published inproposed form, but the discussion in the ozone implementation rule wascontradictory.

In finalizing the three clean air rules, EPA considered environmental justice to varying degrees. Public commenters stated that all three rules, as proposed, raised environmental justice issues. In responding to suchcomments on the gasoline rule, EPA published its belief that the rule would not create such issues, but did not publish the data and assumptionssupporting its belief. Specifically, EPA did not publish (1) its estimate thatpotentially harmful air emissions would increase in 26 of the 86 countieswith refineries affected by the rule or (2) its assumption that this estimateoverstated the eventual increases in refinery emissions. For the diesel rule, in response to refiners’ concerns that their permits could be delayed if environmental justice issues were raised by citizens, EPA stated that the permits would not be delayed by such issues. Moreover, after reviewing the comments, EPA did not change its final economic reviews to discuss the gasoline and diesel rules’ potential environmental justice impacts. Finally, the portions of the ozone implementation rule that prompted the comments about environmental justice were not included in the final rule. Overall, EPA officials said that these rules, as published in final form, did not create an environmental justice issue.

Scientists studying the effects of aerosols on the Atlantic Ocean confirm that smoke, dust, and pollution indeed may moderate the effects of global warming there. Aerosols both reduce cloud droplet size and increase shallow cloud cover. And the cloud cover effects are much more important than the effects of smaller droplet size.

So, pollution is cool and climate models underestimate the impact of aerosols and thus exaggerate the likely amount of warming. I guess this comes under the good news category, but...

Scientists now expect a 4500 square mile dead zone in the Gulf rather than the 1500 square mile zone predicted by NOAA. Link: CBS News | Gulf Dead Zone Larger Than Thought | August 2, 2005�12:00:22. But the good news, also from NOAA, is that we expect more severe storms (up to 14 more named storms) by November. That may stir up the gulf and shrink the dead zone a bit.